Clarkdale's Efficiency: Core i5-661 Versus Core 2, Athlon II, And Phenom II

Benchmark Results: Applications

3ds Max runs faster on the new Core i5 dual-core, but part of the performance benefit can be found in the fact that Turbo Mode accelerates the clock speeds up to 3.6 GHz under heavy load. This being a threaded test, we wouldn't expect to see the full benefit of Turbo; however, a single bin should still be available when we're until the CPU's TDP limit.

We’re seeing significant advantages when scanning for viruses using AVG anti-virus. Other AV solutions might show different results, though.

Creating a PDF document out of Powerpoint still is faster on Intel systems than on our AMD test rigs, but in this test the Core i5-661 has no noticeable advantage compared to Core 2 Duo. The Core 2’s larger L2 cache could be an advantage in this test.

Photoshop benefits signficantly from the new Core i5 dual-core. Although the processing time of our workload decreases by a quarter, part of this is due to the increased i5 clock speed with Turbo Boost. Hyper-Threading also likely comes into play, since our filters are all threaded.

WinRAR’s performance gains are probably due to the inclusion of Hyper-Threading, which maximizes utilization in threaded applications, such as WinRAR.

We see more performance in WinZip, but this time it's likely a result of Turbo Boost, since this app is not optimized for multiple cores.